By Athena Yeung ’13

Charles Frank ’13 has taken his filming to the next level after winning Best Picture in the Williston Film Festival two years in a row. He filmed part of his short film, Doodle, on the Williston campus last year. Recently, Doodle has been selected to appear in a showcase in New York. 

In this interview, Charles talks about the film and the upcoming showcase.

Here’s a video Charles made earlier in the year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfbfDTTK0fc&feature=youtu.be

Tell me about the film festival you are invited to in New York.
We submitted to a lot of different festivals for the film, but this is not a festival. It’s actually a showcase, which is a little bit different. It’s not being ranked, necessarily… It’s suppose to be an incentive to make actors that are part of the Screen Actress Guild want to go out there and be in films. Doodle is one of the 8 that was selected to be screened to the members of the Screen Actress Guild.

What is the name of this film festival?
The Screen Actress Guild Short film Showcase.

How long did you spend on Doodle?
From when I first conceptualized the idea, to when we finished the film all the way through, it was probably about a year.

How did your film get picked out for the showcase?
Of the films submitted, this showcase chooses the ones that they think would best represent the Screen Actress Guild.  We are one of the eight that was chosen.

When did you find out?

I think I found out maybe a week ago. I got an e-mail.

Congratulations. So what were you and your whole team’s reaction?
It’s always rewarding to receive some sort of tangible recognition for the hard work the team put into the film. The team is super supportive of the whole thing and they are really excited to have their name on something that’s going to be shown to a bunch of people. And I’m just really humbled by the level of support I’ve gotten this far.

That’s a great honor.
Yeah, it’s pretty cool. The one thing that I wish is that… like I said, it’s not technically a festival. This is more of just a showcase, so they’re just showing our film and then afterwards there’s a Q&A panel. So I’m going to be going up on the stage and the people from the audience can ask me questions about the film and I’ll be able to answer.

When is this going to happen?
January 30th. Right before Long Weekend.

Are you nervous? What questions do you think those people will ask?
I don’t know! I am a little bit nervous about that because I’m going to go up in front of a large group of actors that could potentially be or have been in much bigger projects than mine, and even filmmakers that know more about the industry than I do. I am just excited to, kind of like, for the first time, have people watch it in a large group and see how people react. Connecting with people is the number one reason I love film making, so it will be very cool to be in a theater environment and see how people react to it. It’s really cool to me to have people be able to talk to me directly after the film and say like: “What about this?” “What happens here?” Hearing from the audience, [and] getting feedback is the coolest way.

Is Doodle showed anywhere now?
People that were involved with the film had seen it… but it’s not released for the public yet. But hopefully soon.

Where will it be when it’s released?
Technically, we have a copy online but we’re not showing to people yet because we don’t want to release it yet. It will be on Vimeo when we want to release it… then we can send it to whomever we want to.

Where else did you submit Doodle?
There’s actually a list on our Facebook page. We submitted to a festival called NFFTY, which is “niff-ty”. That’s the largest youth festival in the world. And then we submitted to Seattle Future Wave, The SAG Short film showcase- which is the one we just got into, Chicago City Youth, and the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival.

Did you hear back from any others yet?
This is the first one we’ve heard back from. The others we are still waiting on. Right when we finished Doodle, or right when we were close to finishing Doodle, we had a festival coordinator that just went out and research what festivals would make the most sense to submit to… I was still under 18 when I started it and I am under 21, which means that I can submit to a lot of the youth festivals… We had someone look out and see like, okay, what youth festivals can we be eligible for, and what would make the most sense- the themes of the films- what matches up with the certain expectations of different festivals and what not… We limited down to nine festivals that made the most sense to submit to… We are scheduled to submit to them all the way through 2014. Right now we submitted to five but we still have four more down the road.

So basically you are competing with people your age?
Yeah. So actually, the interesting thing about the one we just submitted and got accepted to is that it wasn’t a youth festival. It was just for anyone that submitted… that was pretty cool.

Rumor has it that you went to Sundance Film Festival… is that true?
No. That’s not true. That would’ve been so cool. That’s like a dream, but no.

EDITOR’S CORRECTION: The first few paragraphs refer to the “Screen Actress Guild” and the associated program, “The Screen Actress Guild Short film Showcase.” This is mistaken. The union is known as the “Screen Actor’s Guild” and their associated program is known as the “The Screen Actor’s Guild Foundation Short Film Showcase.”